Beyond Peer-Reviewed Articles: Using Blogs to Enrich Students’ Understanding of Scholarly Work

Undergraduate students are expected to find, evaluate, and use peer-reviewed or scholarly literature, but they rarely learn about the process of creating new knowledge or the roles the literature plays in the work of scholars. A desired outcome of undergraduate education is the understanding that knowledge is created, evolving, and contextual rather than discovered, static, and universal. There is some evidence that explicit instruction can facilitate this understanding. As scholars use the participatory Web to talk about the work that they do, they also create places where students can look in on the knowledge creation process.